// Latest Posts

A tale of rhynes and reens in the South West corner: Part three in a botanical tale of exploring natural variation around us

This post is written by Kellie Smith. See her previous posts about the great duckweed hunt here. The next exciting stop off point on our duckweed tour is the South West. In this case, the South West region refers to the ridge between Wales and England – Bristol, on the English side and Newport, on …

The National Food Strategy: our Director responds

This post is written by Prof David Salt. We welcome the publication of the National Food Strategy today. Since 2017, the Future Food Beacon has spearheaded transdisciplinary research on food systems, clear in the knowledge that our food systems must change in order to preserve population health and the health of the planet. The current …

Duckweed hunting in the South West: Part two in a botanical tale of exploring natural variation around us

This post is written by Kellie Smith I introduced the great duckweed hunt in my previous blog starting on the South East coast. The quest takes me this week to the other end of the South, the South west corner, particularly St Austell and the Cornwall region. It turns out Cornwall is quite far! Why …

The great duckweed hunt! Part one in a botanical tale of exploring natural variation around us

This post is written by Kellie Smith. Welcome to our new series, showcasing duckweed! We have written about duckweed before, but these posts showcase PhD candidate Kellie Smith’s fieldwork hunting duckweed around the UK. Kellie is an avid duckweed collector and researcher in Food and Agriculture at the University of Nottingham. She is passionate about …

Take control of your career #3: Preparing a fellowship – the secret is the 3Ps

This post is written by Peter Noy. Dr Peter Noy is the Associate Director for Research at the Future Food Beacon. His work mentoring early career researchers is integral to his key responsibility for coordinating and developing successful funding bids for the Beacon. When thinking about fellowships it is important to remember the three Ps: …

The importance of food safety

Today is World Food Safety Day! The foods we eat need to be safe for us to consume, not only for human health but wider planetary health, economic prosperity and sustainable development. There are systemic interconnections between the health of people, animals, plants, the environment, and the economy. We all have a role to play …

Statistics in the GeoNutrition project – by Murray Lark, Christopher Chagumaira and Alice Milne

The intriguing message from our recent Nature paper (Gashu et al., 2021) is that the concentration of essential dietary micronutrients (like zinc and selenium) in locally-grown staple crops depends on where you look in the landscape. This was found in two African countries with contrasting cropping and food systems, but a shared common challenge of …

Micronutrients in cereals in Ethiopia and Malawi – the GeoNutrition team’s Nature paper

This week we are celebrating the publication of the GeoNutrition project team’s paper published in Nature: ‘The nutritional quality of cereals varies geospatially in Ethiopia and Malawi’. Here, we summarise some of the paper’s headline findings. We also provide links to several pieces that take different angles on the work done, the people involved and …

Take control of your career #2: The early bird catches the worm – by Peter Noy

Photo by Mathew Schwartz on Unsplash The short version of this blog is that, as an early career researcher, the best thing you can do to be successful is to start writing grants early and keep writing them! Now for the longer version… One of the keys to academic success is convincing other people to …